I left my keys upon the table

“Learn from your mistakes” – that’s what the wise man use to say and I can for sure second that. Our friends Fredrik, Victor and Christian arrived to Prague yesterday and they invited us over to a pre-party. We got ready to go and Jeanine reminded me to bring the key to the flat before we went. I did take one of three key rings, took my shoes on and walked out the door firmly closing it after me.
Then it hit me. I have the wrong key ring in my left pocket. FIRETRUCK!!!

Our apartment have five different keys; one for the main entrance, two for the first door (the one I closed) and two for the second entrance. The key ring I had taken with me contained all the keys except the one that opens the first door.
Now you might ask yourself why I panicked and just didn’t open the door again?
You see, the door is equipped with a self locking mechanism so once you close it from the outside it locks itself.
Why didn’t I just use the second door?
Well, let me tell you about “learning from your mistakes”. Before I went I locked the second door from the inside, put the locking chain in the door and left the keys in the lock. That means that I couldn’t get my key in the lock from the outside to unlock it and even if I could the chain would prevent me from open the door enough.

What a dilemma. I can tell you this: the feeling of being so close to your home not being able to enter it, just having a wooden door in between a cold night in Prague and a warm bed, is rather annoying. We even considered climbing “the pigeon tomb” in order to get in through the bathroom or the hall window.

So there we stood and the party mood we gained during the last hour just disappeared in thin air. I cursed a couple of times and considered to smash the door open. We realised that the best thing we could do was to wait for tomorrow to call the house manager and pray that the devil would be nice enough to have left a back up key for him.

We bunkered up some more beers and went to the guys place. It was so nice to see them again after the summer and we had a lot of catching up to do. Somewhere around 1 ó clock we finally went out to roam the streets of Prague for a place to go. We had been talking about going to Hot Peppers and that’s where Fredrik steered the vessel since he’d been there before and knew the way.
If you’re on your way to google “hot peppers” by now, just before you do, let me say that:
“yes, we had a pretty ‘interesting’ night”
and:
“no, I didn’t even think about the fact that we were locked out – I had my focus on other things...”.

I woke up with a minor hangover in Fredrik, Victor and Christians Bachelor attic – surprisingly light considering the amount of beer I had yesterday. The key problem still bugged me and I also remembered that we got a delivery from IKEA to meet up at 10 ó clock.
We tried to call for the manager guy but didn’t get through. No luck there and my mood started to drop.
The delivery guys from IKEA called and we had to sprint back home and meet them up. Unfortunately, and yes we did ask them, neither of them were any good at picking locks.

Still banned from a comfortable bed, a warm bath and a toothbrush we went to our Italian restaurant to get something to eat and to find a number to a locksmith at their included Wi-Fi. Finally we actually had some luck, if you can call paying 1800CZK (720SEK) luck that is, and got in touch with a locksmith that could help us in. The manager of the house called right after we got the locksmith but it wouldn’t matter much since he didn’t have any extra keys.

Our adventure finally came to an end and when you look in the mirror it was pretty obvious that it would’ve happened sooner or later and that the experiences only makes you wiser.The first thing I did when we came home was to remove the chain and the key in the second door and to sort out the keys.

I want to learn how to pick locks...